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The Return Of The Live Human Being

Posted by timothy on from the voice-menu-hell dept.

Metism writes: "The voice on the other end of the phone does not tell you to 'please listen carefully, as our menu options have changed'. E-mail inquiries do not pretend as though they were never sent. More and more companies are finding out that people actually want to interact with other real people, not pseudo-intelligent machines that can't respond to simple things like 'Hi, how are you?' Did pseudo-intelligent humans forget something so obvious? Companies like LivePerson help clients from large ISPs to small libraries communicate one-on-one with people via the web. Softroad takes the concept of live help one step further by allowing anyone, anywhere access to their live Internet surfers via SMS, 2-way pager, or other mobile device. There's nothing like human ingenuity when it comes to questions more complex than 'what's my balance?' or 'what's the weather in Miami?'. But are more companies going to listen?"

3 of 262 comments (clear)

  1. money by carlivar · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Logic? Common sense? What does this have to do with anything? Humans cost a lot more $$ than a phone system. Unfortunately that seems to be the bottom line. In corporate America, the best solution often is the worst because it is the most expensive.

    Of course, those same companies then blow a huge wad of money on 12 Exchange servers. Sheesh...

    Carl

    --
    Vote Libertarian
  2. Not me! by RumGunner · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When I want to check things like my balances, purchase equipment, etc, I LOVE THE INTERNET. It's quick, it's easy, and I can do EXACTLY what I want, when I want.

    Plus, I'm old enough to realize that most errors in those sorts of things are human errors.

    .

  3. Sometimes there's no difference by saihung · · Score: 5, Insightful

    I've written Voicestream's Customer Care complaining about various aspects of their service. Recently, I sent them a letter complaining that: GPRS is way too expensive; only in the US do we get billed for incoming SMS messages. An actual HUMAN BEING responded to my email, and sent me a note explaining their SMS and GPRS pricing schedules, which of course has nothing to do with what I was complaining about. The humans in these call centers are often doing the same thing a computerized system does: responding to keywords, and ignoring the rest of your problem.